Bridges, including pedestrian bridges and vehicular bridges, have a wide range of applications. For example, pedestrian bridges can be used in skywalks between buildings, gangways to embark or disembark ships and other vehicles, elevated walkways in architectural interiors, boardwalks, and any other setting where people move.
Currently, pedestrian bridges are often formed of welded components. Such bridges tend to be complicated and potentially expensive to assemble and often need to be transported to their site pre-assembled. Where welded bridges are assembled on-site, as may be the case in larger structures, assembly can be laborious, expensive and complicated, requiring intervention of highly-skilled welders and other professionals. Also, such bridges tend to be permanent, since their assembly is generally irreversible and they sometimes can only be removed by destructive deconstruction.
Pedestrian bridges that are not welded or that are generally disassemblable tend to suffer from a number of drawbacks, including being susceptible to vandalism, tampering, and accidental disassembly. Such acts can have devastating consequences, particularly in cases of bridges that can fail and cause human loss if intentionally or unintentionally weakened or disassembled. Additionally, such bridges tend to have highly visible weld lines which are detrimental to their aesthetic appeal.
Similar considerations can also arise in vehicular bridges. Furthermore, similar considerations can also arise in other types of structures, such as buildings, fences, towers (e.g., antennae tower), gantries (e.g., motorway gantries, crane gantries, etc.), to name a few.
For these and other reasons, there is a need for improvements in structural assemblies for constructing bridges and other structures.